Tag Archives: disability support

Funded by the Higher Education Coordinating Board and under the management of The Education Institute at Texas State University, the Texas Developmental Education Professional Community Online (TX DEPCO) is proud to release to the public Promising Practices in Developmental Education.

This scholarly monograph is a selection from the TX DEPCO featured practitioners, who expanded their promising practices in terms of content and scholarly rigor for peer review. The printed version of Promising Practices debuted at CASP 2017 in Galveston this past October, but the archived version is available for free from the TEI website or here for immediate download: Promising Practices_TX DEPCO Monograph_2017.

Thank you again for all of the authors and readers involved in the TX DEPCO’s publishing cycle.

Ren VanderLind is a doctoral student at Texas State University studying Developmental Literacy. Her research interests are currently focused on the issues facing college students with mental illness, particularly in terms of resilience, stigmatization, and identity development. She currently works as the Graduate Coordinator in the Texas State University Writing Center. Questions or comments can be directed to Ren at ren.vanderlind@txstate.edu.

When working to support the needs of students with mental illness, one might feel pressured to have all the answers; on the contrary, there is no one solution for supporting the needs of college students with mental illness as symptoms and necessary supports are rather diverse. One promising practice for increasing the success of college students with mental illness is teaching self-regulatory skills alongside explicit instruction in how to apply these skills outside the classroom.

By teaching self-regulatory processes, one can provide support to students with mental illness without requiring that they self-disclose their diagnoses or that you specialize your instruction; development of self-regulatory skills is beneficial for all students. To accomplish this, ask students to monitor their behaviors and the efficacy of them as well as how they might go back and revise their approach for a better outcome. Then make explicit how this can apply to their academic pursuits as well as their personal lives. Show students how using self-regulation can benefit them when they are struggling outside the classroom, such as in instances in which they need to seek help.

Developing metacognitive and self-regulatory skills will benefit this population immensely, as building self-awareness is a large component of managing mental illness symptoms. If you can help students grow in self-awareness, you can help them become more in tune with their personal and academic needs. It may seem like a small step, but teaching these skills to your students can help those who have diagnosed mental illnesses persist through the course, semester, and academic career.

Jack Trammell received his B. A. degree in political science from Grove City College and, following a M. Ed., was awarded a Ph. D. in Education, Research and Evaluation from Virginia Commonwealth University. His experience includes working as a special education teacher in the Virginia public schools. He is currently Director of Disability Support Services and Assistant Professor in the Sociology Department, teaching disability studies at Randolph-Macon College. His research interests include disability stigma, transition, and the social mechanisms related to disability discrimination. He can be reached by email at: jtrammel@rmc.edu.

Disability support in higher education has its roots in a more general educational access tradition that dates back much further than the 1990 and 2008 reauthorized Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 504. In the 1950s, Dr. John King hired football players to assist a teacher candidate who was a wheelchair user, and he began a long career of advocacy for physical access to campus spaces (Fleischer & Zames, 2001). In a similar fashion, the learning assistance movement that gained traction in the 1970s, and spread through major universities, benefited many students with disabilities and highlighted the need for new partnerships (Boylan, 1982).

In the post-1990 ADA environment, disability support services have been routinely offered to students, but the organizational structures have varied widely—some resources were located in medical schools; some in student services; some in academic services—and some were actually housed within learning assistance programs (LAPs) or academic centers. Of all the models, a strong argument can be made that disability support services (DSS) fits most effectively within the learning center for programmatic, philosophical, and assessment purposes.
The following is an abbreviated list of reasons supporting such an organizational concept:

• Philosophically, disability support is an effort to foster equal access to education; this is the core mission of learning assistance.

• In terms of accommodation, differentiation, remediation, and elaboration, all learning assistance programs potentially can benefit from shared resources, ranging from general tutoring programs to reading programs targeted specifically at students with dyslexia—silos can actually create more inequity.

• Increasingly, students with disabilities are overrepresented in learning assistance programs, and LAPs can therefore benefit from DSS resources.

• Learning centers tend to have more elaborate administrative structures, which actually can benefit more traditionally isolated DSS units.

• Learning assistance has a rich literature and expertise that overlaps with DSS.

• Disability is being conceptualized in the ongoing disability rights movement (DRM) as mainstream; and therefore, shouldn’t be isolated or set apart in a stigmatizing manner (a good reason not to house DSS in the medical school if possible).

Each institution is different, of course, and will have its own unique circumstances. Program assessment is also critical in order to determine the effectiveness of current or potential organizational structures (Trammell, 2005). Increasingly, however, there is both practical and philosophical evidence that centering the disability support office in the learning center makes good sense for many institutions.

The Texas Developmental Education Professional Community Online (TX DEPCO) extends from the Texas Success Initiative Professional Development Program, funded by a grant from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and facilitated by The Education Institute at Texas State University.